Improving Your iPhone Photography With The olloclip

Posted on December 17, 2015

Being a photographer, I’ve pretty much always got my camera with me. Even if I don’t have any specific plans to be shooting, I have a habit of carrying it around, just in case. Now that the age of iPhones and smartphones i is upon us, even if I don’t have my ‘big’ camera for some reason, I’ve always got a camera with me in my phone, although I admit it’s not my choice for capturing great images.

However, my iPhone skills are about to improve again. I was lucky enough to receive an iPhone lens to test and review from the makers of, what I think, to be the best iPhone lens on the market: olloclip. I’ve been testing it for the last few weeks, and I’m already really impressed.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve owned an olloclip lens. Way back in 2012 I was living on Great Keppel Island when they sent me an earlier model to test on the iPhone 4. That was a 3-in-1 lens, and I was totally blown away by the quality and the abilities of the lens.

Three years later, I am all that and more. The lens model I have now is the olloclip 4-in-1 lens, which includes a wide angle, fish eye, and macro lens in both 10x and 15x.

The Lenses

I love the flexibility of the olloclip lenses. With an iPhone there can be limitations to what you shoot, especially as there’s a narrow area that you can capture, and the zoom (and even focus) capabilities are not really worth talking about. With the olloclip, I have the ability to both capture a wide landscape, play around with fisheye, and discover a new world of macro photography.

So far, I’ve been using primarily the fisheye and the macro lenses. The macro is great because I’ve never owned a professional macro lens for my DLSR before, but the quality of the olloclip macros are so great I don’t think I’d need one. It’s so fun just to see what things looks like under this kind of magnification, totally unexpected but I could experiment with it all day!

The fisheye was my favourite lens back in 2012, and it still is today. I’m always struggling to get myself in the shot, especially with my iPhone. I want to have more pictures of me and Dean, but with the narrow view of my phone’s camera getting just one person into a selfie is a challenge. With the olloclip it’s not just easy to get the picture, it’s simple to get great pictures. All the photos I’ve taken of us so far have turned out, and I love the opportunity to capture more of our day-to-day life.

Wide angle has never really been an area of interest to me as a photographer, but I have always been frustrated at the very narrow angle of view on iPhone cameras. If you’ve ever seen the difference between an android camera and an iPhone one, you’ll know what I mean. The iPhone camera are just super zoomed in, which now that I’ve got the olloclip lens I can totally do something about!

Usability & Durability

Obviously it’s hard for me to make concrete comments about the long-term durability of this olloclip. However I can say that my last one went with me to almost 10 countries and on pretty much every adventure I took without even showing a scratch or any wear. In terms of the mechanics and makeup of this olloclip, it looks more or less the same if not better. Certainly, the lens caps are much thicker, which I’m happy about.

Now usability, that I can say something on. The olloclip lens system is super easy to use, anyone can figure it out. Just pick your lens, slip it onto your iPhone, and start shooting. The only problems you’re going to have is if you have a plastic screen protector on your phone, or you keep your phone in a case that’s difficult to get off. If that’s the case there will be fiddling, but even then it’s still very easy.

Overall

There are a lot of low-quality options out there for iPhone photographers, but if you want quality that’s going to last there aren’t too many companies that do it better than olloclip. It’s a lens that will travel with you, put up with the battering of life, and capture your adventures as they happen.

You can’t really ask for more than that.

** I was lucky enough to receive a free olloclip from the company to test and review, but I am passionate about this great brand, and all the opinions expressed here are freely my own.**

This post originally appeared on BarefootBeachBlonde.com, the pre-evolved version of Maps And Mandalas. I’ve republished it here with its original date because I love it that much.

Oceana is the blogger behind Maps + Mandalas. She’s a wanderer more than a traveller, with a passion for walking, geocaching, and photography. She lives in the tropical Northern Territory of Australia with her wonderful fiancé, and spend most of her time devising ways to beat the heat.

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Behind Maps & Mandalas

Hi there!
I’m Oceana, the blogger behind Maps + Mandalas. I’m a wanderer more than a traveller, with a passion for walking, geocaching, and photography. I live in the tropical Northern Territory of Australia with my wonderful fiancé, and spend most of my time devising ways to beat the heat.